


Retrovirus

by Outside_Context_Problem



Series: The Troll War [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Espionage, Even troll Dave has relationship problems, F/M, Hemospectrum, I will never reveal the Wu-Tang secret, M/M, Multi, Polyamory in theory?, Subjuggulators, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-18
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 03:17:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Outside_Context_Problem/pseuds/Outside_Context_Problem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when Agent Dave Strider (Human Coalition Intelligence) and Lt. Karkat Vantas (Coalition Alternian Cooperative Department, attached to HCI) get involved with Neophyte Terezi Pyrope (Alternian Empire Legislacerators) in a deadly game of cat and also cat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You were trained for this?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave Strider: SUBJUGGLATOR.
> 
> It gets better from there.

_This is a feeling I have become all too familiar with. This is the taste of blood - mine in my mouth, and someone else's on my blade.  
This is wearing different skin, pumping different fluids through my veins. This is lying with every breath I take and weaving them into more layers than any beats I ever dropped.  
This is killing people. Daily.  
This is being a troll._   
**Asset "Clockwork", personal log, hour 130 (deleted)**

_This is me being unfair. They're not all the same. I've met doctors, gardeners, architects, and poets. Hell, their species even produced Karkat.  
This is me being a troll. I didn't have to be an indigo-blood. I didn't have to make my alias a - a murderer. I didn't have to take the center of attention while Vantas slips in the back doors I leave open. There was plenty of possibility in a mid-caste disguise, something that wouldn't get noticed.  
But I didn't do that.  
And I'm beginning to get entirely too comfortable with this._   
**Asset "Clockwork", personal log, hour 131 (deleted)**

**3496 hours after first Terran-Alternian hostilities**  
You haven't actually seen Vantas in days. Nights. Whatever. You've been busy with his pet project, an old buddy of his (and, he claims, his moirail).  
A half-stoned, half-indiscriminately homicidal war clown.

You have to admit that maybe that's why you took this artificial-indigo blood transfusion, when you went through the two month long process of retroviral/surgical/endless fucking cultural briefing treatment from Karkat and Equius to make yourself a troll (or at the least, Earthfleet's best imitation of one, which works out pretty damn well).

Because seriously? Murder-clowns who practice "the ancient art of slam poetry"? You motherfucking had to get down with that.  
The uniform maybe not so much; but it's cool. The pics of you in clown makeup and baggy polka-dot pants are going to ironically amuse Bro so much when you get extracted and can share them.

You enter Gamzee Makara's respiteblock with a casual smack of the door. Sometimes this makes him crane his head up from the couch. Sometimes it makes him drop from his leg-straining perch above the doorway and try to smash your skull in with his juggling clubs.  
You don't really care either way. Frankly, it makes you feel at home. Well, except for Bro never _really_ trying to kill you. You think, anyway. You know he loves the hell out of you, but you also know dude never fucked around. He considers it to be a failure if you're not giving it your all.  
 _Thanks. You cool-ass ironic motherfucker. Thanks for keeping me alive from a hundred lightyears away._  
Not that it's Gamzee you have to watch out for. You - You, Dave Strider, all 1.9 goddamn meters of you - are small as hell compared to a lot of these trolls. And they kind of have a pack mentality about that. Smallest means weakest means back of the line, runt, and then we kick your teeth in.  
Dealing with that wasn't hard at first. You turned to the most enduring relic of the Nuclear Age music scene - a miraculous legacy, really. The musical warriors who inspired Dirk to train you in blade and beats. The group that created an entire culture lasting some time into the 21st century.

The first guy to fuck with you? He got to try your Wu-Tang Style. You swung swords and cut clowns, too swift to bite you record and wrote it down.  
That bought you a good bit of respect.

Respect in the case of Subjugglators means they consider you worthy enough to let out a blood-curdling scream before trying to kill you.  
That's getting to be pretty cool by you, actually. When it comes to a fight, you've got as much time as you need.

And Makara is happier when you give him paint. Even if it is frequently the same color.

You fucking love it. You end up killing more trolls because you're fucking "that sopor-eating excuse for a troll" than any other reason. But he's the most dangerous goddamn one of them. Barely any of the Subjugglators have any kind of power behind their chucklevoodoos. But Gamzee? If he ever gets sober he's a fucking _nightmare_. You got boosted with some endocrine mods to let you flood your brain with whatever neurochems you need to overwhelm some psychic troll who's entirely within your grill.  
When he's sober, Makara can still fuck you up enough, even with your glands emptying out full-speed, that your goddamn hands tremble.  
He's only done that once, though, and you're the only living witness.

You think, lying curled up with Makara in his recuperacoon, that Karkat might be a little too fucking much like John. Motherfucker believes way too goddamn well of some people.  
Fuck it, you're probably worse than Makara. He's a doped-out teddy-bear most of the time, and the other shit? It's in his blood.  
You had a kill count before you went indigo.  
And you're in troll-love with said lunatic anyway. "Pity", Karkat insists. You dunno about that. You know Makara's kind of a dope, but you genuinely like him. Want to see him succeed. Sometimes you mean "succeed at cleaning himself up, at being a good friend and person and all that". Sometimes you mean "succeed at his sober-rant genocide."  
Jesus, you really are the problem. At least you haven't said any of this to him. You and Gamzee are alright without having to be murder-buddies. It doesn't hurt that the rap-offs are fucking amazing. Almost as good as the sex.

You get six nights with Gamzee - four good, two sober. One of those he jumps you, manages to get in a hit that nearly breaks your ribs, then spends the rest of the night unable to let go of you. The other he spends ranting about needing paint, about killing them all for it, about burning this world to the ground. You spend at least two hours arguing with Karkat that you need to smuggle his cherry-red ass in to shoosh-pap the motherfucker ASAP. You blame raging with the ranting rut for why you reveal a goddamn Human Coalition tech masterpiece advancement, and shove a Sopor Mask cranked up to 150% on your poor fucking matesprit till he turns back to stoner mode. At least he won't remember you have it. Shit, you'll be happy if he remembers you when you get back.

The seventh night after you finally make Subjugglator qualifications (using some weird-ass psychological games that Karkat put together with HCI's top psych warfare experts - Bro and Rose, naturally - to fake the "chucklevoodoo a lowblood to death" part of the trial), you get to the consequences of murdering seven other Subjugglators: you're now the goddamn prodigy clown-killer, and you get dragged up at the crack of dusk, onto a shuttle, and off for your first real terrorizing mission.

That's when you first meet Neophyte Terezi Pyrope, and when you kindle the spark that will grow into a very, very passionate hatred.

And you thought you had relationship problems as a human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah that's right I just wrote flushed Dave/Gamzee whatcha gonna do about it. And I wasn't even remotely intending to when I started this story.
> 
> And no, there will be no ICP. Only so much culture can survive for 400 years, and Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nothing To Fuck Wit.


	2. The Maze of Dave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trusting your instincts works best for spies who haven't become a different species.  
> Dave gets a bit too angry, and Karkat has plans. Quit fucking trading roles on me, you two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who missed it, chapter 1 has been ninja-edited into a full chapter.

**3667 hours after first Terran-Alternian hostilities**  
You've been moving so fast, culture clash hasn't had a chance to catch up with you. The Subjugglation, the castes, the freaky alien genitalia, whatever. None of it really phased you.  
Terezi Pyrope is a motherfucking brick wall. Seeing Subjugglators - who you fucking _know_ are grade-A psychotics with the caste authority to terrorize and murder pretty much anyone under them - regarded as vaguely disobedient but easily controlled ~~dogs~~ barkbeasts by a _goddamn teal-blood_?  
Yeah, okay, that's fucking _weird_.

And then, after she tells you and the other two indigos the basics of the case in a sing-song easy to understand vocabulary for babies, and you snap back with a "Motherfucking obvious we gonna squeeze these uppity fuckers till they _pop_ ," she reaches up and _pats you on the motherfucking head_.

"Not at all! You are going to stand there behind me nice and still while I ask the Planetary Exarchutive a few polite questions, which he will _not_ be too terrorized to answer, then we are going to leave without hurting anyone, _understand_?"

She follows that question up by ramming the head of her cane directly into your fluid-dredgers.

You wait exactly thirty seconds after her departure before whirling on your cohorts.  
"Why, motherfuckin' exactly, am I not showing this _blind_ teal motherfucker my stabs?" You snarl at Ragash Pintar, a motherfucker edging over the line from bulky to chubby, one you don't gotta worry about much, cuz his psychic skills are shit and his griefing skills are worse.

"No reason at all man, motherfucking go for it." Of course, not worrying about him trying to kill you directly doesn't mean the motherfucker won't lie to your face. At least he's shitty at that too.

You raise an eyebrow at Iskart Kiirdu, who is basically a walking mountain. Physically and mentally. Motherfucker ain't stupid, he's just slow. He's a bit like Gamzee, lotta rage crammed into a few outbursts, except Iskart doesn't just snap, he's got a long-burning fuze. "What you got to say, brother?"

Iskart doesn't like you, but he doesn't hate you either. You two have never had beef. "Do what she says."

Motherfucker ain't exactly helpful when it comes to thinking things though. Alright fuck it.

Sehzar is a pit of a planet. Mineral-heavy, jack shit organic. So naturally it's a strip-mine where lowbloods and criminals get sent to toil and die. Your swank digs at the starport (a couple of rooms you're fucking sure were storage last perigee, with recuperacoons that smell like the sopor's gone bad. Another reason to be glad Gamzee's not here, you guess.) are a fucking haven compared to the shit you're breathing in the moment you step outside.  
New lowblood workers trudge by in ragged cloaks, their only protection from the cold - there's barely enough atmosphere to breathe here, let alone trap the meager light of this system's red dwarf. At least the darkness is actually pleasant.  
You watch the workers for lack of anything better to do, your instincts and training running through the back of your mind, assessing each in turn.

Then one of them throws up mental red flags. _Bright_ red flags. You stomp over, everyone making a path for you, and yank the offender up by his robe, dragging him out of the column, throwing him to the ground, and crouching low over him.  
"God _dammit_ Vantas, what the motherfuck are you doing here?"

Karkat gathers his breath and expends it in an instant growl. "I have missions too, ass! That's exactly fucking what independent operation means!"

"I don't motherfucking need this, Karkat! Dealing with that crazy-ass blind legislacerator is enough shit without having to look out for you!"

"Who fucking asked you to l- wait hold the fuck up, Terezi's here?"

You growl, and man your new vocal chords are fucking mean for that. You're like a goddamn tiger. "You _know_ her?"

"Concupiscently. We were matesprits. As kids. She gave me up for the law. Associating with a blood anonymity follower would have ruined her. I don't fucking blame her."

You kick him. "Idiot. You care about everyone but yourself, Karkat. She doesn't seem worth the martyr act to me. Whatever. What's your mission here?" You kick him again before he can get anything close to the words "independent operation" out of his mouth. Idiot. "So I can fucking divert Pyrope if she looks to be onto you."

"… the Exarchutive's been sending up higher fatality rates, and smuggling the supposedly dead lowbloods out to safe havens."  
You don't facepalm, because you're too badass for that, and it ruins your facepaint besides, but Karkat can actually read your expressions by now. "That's exactly what she's fucking here for, isn't it?"

"Motherfucking probably. She didn't tell us shit, just expected us to come running when she snaps her fingers."

"Yeah, well, get used to it. That's just Terezi."

"One of us isn't going to fucking survive this," you snarl. Karkat opens his mouth, then, for probably the first time in his life, reconsiders and shuts it.

"I've got to get moving, Davirk. Need to get in touch with our people in the mines. Standard encrypted channel should be active if you need to pass on info."

You stand up, but have one last thing to ask. "Hey, Vantas. Why the fuck _can't_ I kill her?"

His smile is pretty fucking grim, but there's a hint of smugness too. "Because our malevolent dictator is getting just a bit paranoid in her immortal age. The Legislacerators got their jurisdiction and powers massively expanded a sweep or two ago, so they can hunt down the waves of treason that the Condesce sees rising against her. I fucking wonder why she might think that. Anyway, you make a move on Terezi and you'll have every Imperial Drone on the planet looking to get painted in your blood."

"Hate those biorobot motherfuckers," you grumble.

"Try being a mutant-blood for ten sweeps, Dav. I'm out."

You let Karkat go with a staged (but in no way held back) shove and some shouted threats, then go back to your rooms. Nothing to do but fucking wait.

God you hope someone works up the nerve to piss you off.

 **13 hours in the future**  
You don't know which part is worse - trying to seem stupid and violent while you work out how to sabotage Pyrope's investigation, or trying not to stab Pyrope every time she condescendingly praises your stupidity and violence. You just want to SHRED this fucking little tealblood for STANDING IN YOUR WAY.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you think maybe you didn't get enough identity crisis training before this mission.

Unfortunately, you have pretty much just the one source of reassurance.

**[Encrypted Communication Log]**  
DS: dude im fucking losing it  
KV: FUCKS SAKE WHAT NOW  
DS: cant keep my head straight  
DS: covers doing shit to me  
KV: SIGNLESS CHRIST DID YOU SPACE OUT DURING YOUR ENTIRE TRAINING?  
KV: WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH YOU FUCKASS.  
KV: YOUR COVER IDENTITY IS A GODDAMN LIABILITY AROUND TEREZI.  
KV: AND I WAS KIND OF COUNTING ON YOUR ACTUAL IDENTITY HAVING ENOUGH THINKMATTER TO MAKE UP FOR THAT AND MAYBE EVEN FUCKING USE HER.  
KV: OKAY SHUT UP I HAVE A JOB FOR YOU STRIDER.  
DS: say again  
KV: I HAVE A JOB FOR YOU TO DO, SO THAT YOU MAY ORGANIZE YOUR TINY LABYRINTHIAN EXCUSE FOR A MIND BEFORE YOU ARE TRAPPED IN IT.  
DS: no fuckass  
DS: the other part  
DS: say it again  
KV: HONESTLY? JESUS SUFFERER.  
KV: YOU  
KV: ARE  
KV: DAVE  
KV: STRIDER.  
KV: DAVIRK SIBERI IS A FUCKING CONSTRUCT.  
KV: HE HAS YOUR BROTHER'S NAME MASHED INTO YOURS, FUCKING HELL.  
KV: NOW STOP BEING SO FUCKING DEPENDENT, IT'S DISGUSTINGLY OUT OF CHARACTER  
DS: …   
DS: thanks man  
KV: …  
KV: ANY TIME.  
 **[SIGNAL LOST]**

You are stirred out of your reverie/dazed stupor/clandestine communications by a sharp jab to the gut. The rage boils up but you  
Are  
Dave  
Strider.

You grab Pyrope's staff casually on her second stab attempt, spin yourself around it and stand up. "And what the motherfuck can I be doing for a fine sister like you?" You're not fucking snarling, you're not choking your own words back, you are just motherfucking _smooth_.

The shark grin just cranes up at you. "Good! You're done being a cranky clown. You're coming with me."

"Alright." You always have a sword on your back, so you just glide right after her, hands in your pockets. You want to see casual, Pyrope? You're gonna see fucking casual.  
It's when you get to the central shaft of the Amoria Mines that you realize Pyrope is either a genius or suicidal. Or both.  
Her evidence will be down there, if she's sharp enough to ~~see~~ smell it. Not enough injuries, not enough deaths.  
But Karkat's also down there, along with the five thousand or so miners. And if there is one hidden skill you will give him full credit for being a master at, it's shouting at people until they rise up in angry revolt. And not against him. He started three riots on Voruud while you were hanging out with Gamzee and passing your trials, and last you'd heard, advance conquest forces were being pulled back to deal with the now-planetwide rebellion.

So she could pull off her case and find what she needs to execute the Exarchutive here. Or she could get mobbed and hung.  
Third option, Dave Strider plays the Neophyte like an (extraordinarily skinny) guitar and gets her convinced there's no case.  
You're liking that one.

And the little inner John in the back of your head cackles, because the fucker's just thought of the best practical joke to share with you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Troll and planet names chosen for aesthetic appeal rather than symbolism. I'll leave that to the professionals.


	3. You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave's Master Plan gets through Step 1. Create a master plan.  
> And then the improvisations.

**3682 hours after first Terran-Alternian hostilities**  
This is one song and dance you can do in your sleep. Really, all you have to do is keep a murderous blind lawyer/bounty-hunter from finding out any real facts while seeding her with convenient lies that build a false narrative you're still putting together as you speak.  
Also hide her ex-alien-boyfriend, keep this Exarchutive from getting nailed to a wall, not give yourself away to either of the real Subjugglators… are you forgetting anything?  
Oh yeah. Coming up with some good beats while you're at it. Sehzar is giving you some inspiration for something industrial and grindcore.

You descend into the deep core mine slowly, the overseer's lifting elevated platform winching down past level after level of passages. Weary rustbloods lie slumped against the tunnels, trembling from day terrors in their sleep, or focusing all their energy into the piercing, fiery, icy, blank stares they give you and Terezi.  
You wonder how much the tealblood can actually see with her synaesthetic ability, wonder if she knows exactly what she's getting into with this investigation, wonder how much oppression a people can take before they stand up and revolt.

 _You know precisely how much, Dave, because you know human history. You know they can be made complicit in their own slavery, have their inferiority woven into them from birth, be beyond broken by a vast majority_.  
Thanks, History Rose. As if it weren't bad enough you have her voice in your head, you have a dozen, for each of her overachieving areas of expertise, and they're all immune to sarcasm.

"No questions, juggler-boy?" Terezi accompanies her inquiry with a jab at your leg from her cane, which you grab and spin aside with one hand. Neither of you remarks on that part.

"Naw, sista, a brotha got to figure out what's happening before it happens to him. You don't know your turf, you end up pavement. I'll pick it up." You give her a grinning face full of Alternian dentistry, which might be wasted on the blind chick, but then again based on her echoing shark-tooth grin it might not be.

"Don't think I'll get you killed, Davirk?"

"Sista, I would honest to my heart-pump love to see somethin' try." And that is genuine honesty from the goddamn frontal lobes. You don't want to kill anyone down here. Not really. Sympathy with the oppressed, common enemy, Karkat's work and all that. You would have no problems busting the shit out of any tool that annoys you, though.  
Still. Better make sure that doesn't happen.

**[ENCRYPTED COMM BURST]**  
DS: yo vantas, you down here?  
KV: KIND OF BUSY SCRAMBLING TO HIDE THINGS FROM TEREZI AS LONG AS I CAN, STRIDER  
DS: nah just lemme know what assets we got where  
DS: i got a hell of a mindfucker in my head all ready to spring on her  
DS: but i gotta get info from you first  
DS: on the fly  
DS: meaning i love to hear you fuck with my native language and yours dude  
DS: but we dont have time  
KV: SO FUCKING GET TO THE POINT  
DS: pyrope  
DS: enemies  
DS: dislikes  
DS: favored prey  
DS: shit that drives her insane  
DS: addendum more insane than usual.  
KV: OKAY THOSE ALL HAVE THE EXACT SAME ANSWER: VRISKA.  
DS: that being  
KV: VRISKA SERKET. ANOTHER LARVAL FRIEND. OR VICIOUS BITCH ENEMY WHICHEVER YOU PREFER.  
KV: SHE AND TEREZI WERE FLARP PARTNERS. CALLED THEMSELVES THE SCOURGE SISTERS. TILL VRISKA HALF-CRIPPLED TAVROS, BEFORE TEREZI AND ARADIA COULD STOP HER. TAVROS MADE PEACE WITH VRISKA BUT TEREZI DIDN'T.  
KV: SHE FOUND SOME MORON JOURNAL OF HER PSYCHOTIC ANCESTOR AND DECIDED TO COAX HER DRAGON LUSUS INTO HATCHING EARLY.  
DS: did that work  
KV: SHE'S FUCKING BLIND NOW, YOU GUESS. DRAGON'S STILL A GOGDAMN EGG BACK ON ALTERNIA AS FAR AS I KNOW.  
DS: alright so wheres serket now and whats she do  
KV: STELLACRIMATORS. PROBABLY USED HER MIND SHIT TO MAKE SHIPLEADER BY NOW.  
DS: mind shit  
KV: SHE'S A CERULEAN PSYCHIC. MIND CONTROL IN CRAZY AMOUNTS. CAN ONLY REALLY DO IT TO LOWBLOODS THOUGH. NOT TEREZI FOR SOME REASON. SHE SHOULD BE ABLE TO READ MINDS TOO BUT SHE'S SHIT AT IT.  
DS: mind control  
DS: that is  
DS: fucking perfect  
DS: (no sarcasm)  
KV: THAT'D BE A FIRST. ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME YOUR PLAN BEFORE JUMPING INTO TEREZI'S MOUTH AS A LIGHT GRUBSNACK?  
DS: nope implementing now  
DS: keep sending me the locations of all our assets down here though  
 **[DATA TRANSMISSION FOLLOWS]**

Fortunately, intimidation and, you dunno, the majestic view of a pit of a strip mind were more important to the designer of this elevator than speed. You're almost at the lowest level by the time you finish talking to Karkat.

Equally fortunately, Terezi's going to find jack shit here. Karkat is the goddamn Subcommandante Marcos of trolls, busting out the mad insurgency skills. Nothing is hidden "as far as it can be from sight", it's crammed into side crevasses marked as tapped out, or collapsed, his people are scattered among the normal mining population, their instructions are memorized, and all the contraband weapons are nonexistent ( _designed_ weapons are a lot more work than they're worth when you have tech mining tools and a machine shop for mods).

Still, TZ doesn't seem that stupid. You assume she has a reason to be down here.

The Legislacerator doesn't quite put her nose to the ground, but her sniffing and cane-tapping become more methodical. Or more random. She's fucking crazy, who knows.  
Then she takes off like a bolt of lightning, and you actually have to throw yourself into it to keep up.

This side chamber has a lot more branches, but Pyrope only has a nose for the two people in the middle of it. The woman is kneeling in a slack, broken-down way, like a collapsed doll. The man is on one knee next to her, his hands on her shoulders probably the only things holding her up, his head bowed to whisper in her ear, covered but not even fucking remotely disguised by that raggedy brown robe's hood.

A soft ringing turns your head, and Pyrope doesn't have a cane, she has a goddamn sword cane. Shit, now your nodachi feels right at home in the 15th fucking century or whatever.  
"Karkles!"

Vantas doesn't fly into action with his usual speed. He leans over the woman, helping her straighten up and sit on her own at least for a little while. Then he stands, slowly - his rising legs a contrast to the blur of his upper body as his sickle slips out of his robe and into both hands.  
"Terezi."

"I heard you had escaped, Mr. Candy Red. You should have stayed escaped. You know the duties of a Legislacerator include the trial and culling of mutants."

"What're the fucking duties of a friend, Terezi? I dunno, let's fucking ask Aradia!" He points with his sickle at the woman - a real rustblood, lowest caste, not just the generalized lower half (you think of them as carnelian-blooded. At least you did at some point. Before the indigo started thinking for you). She's stabilized, sort of, leaning hard on one trembling arm. She turns, great ram horns perched on a head and neck that hardly seem able to support them, and you see the paleness to her granite skin, the drawn stiffness of it, like there's too little stretched across too much body, even though she's barely more than skin and bones.

"Rustbloods don't live long, Karkat. I can't change that, I'm no Mirthful Messiah." You guess that's supposed to remind you of your loyalties or something. It usually makes you think about clown Jesus and clown Buddha MCing, though. It was a good thing during Subjugglation training that you are the master of the straight face.

Karkat jabs his sickle at Terezi, a symbolic gesture when he's still ten meters back. "And dying in a pit, sick and breaking, suffering-"

"Karkat." You'd expected something thin and frail, like somebody's grandmother, but Aradia's voice is deep, cool, and - multitonal? You _swear_ you hear an echo when she speaks. "Enough. _Her_ rules put me here. They attacked me with every indignity they could manage." She does not so much stand as rise, like a puppet lifted by strings, and with the coronet of carnelian light flickering around her, she suddenly doesn't look so skeletal. "They didn't succeed."

_Right. Lowbloods are physically weaker and more prone to having phenomenal psychic powers._

You really, really hope Karkat told her you're on her side, because you don't even remotely want to test your psychological fear tricks against telekinesis.

Pyrope doesn't seem to care. She leans on her swordcane. Tilts her head. "It is your place, Megido. Are you rebelling?"

"You used to call me by my first name, Terezi. We used to be friends. All I can see is your gogdamned uniform."

"A uniform you should obey. If the indigo isn't enough."

Karkat opens his mouth, and you send a burst of static to his skull comm, shake your head the barest fraction of a degree. "… I don't care about your Subjugglator, Terezi. I'm here to free Aradia and leave. You can decide who you are, the person I pitied, or fucking Neophyte Redglare."

"I have my place. So do you both."

"Sorry, Terezi. I don't intend to go patiently to Death." Karkat readies his sickle, but the light grabs him, pushes him back.

Aradia walks forward, a little steadier with each step. She doesn't quite look like she's dying. She looks like she's overworked, tortured, and _angry_.

You draw your nodachi smoothly with one hand, stepping up beside Pyrope.

Then swing your other hand around and brain the Legislacerator with a rock. She staggers for a moment, then collapses. _Damn_ but trolls have thick heads.

Aradia stares at you, eyes pulsing, and you decide putting the sword down is a good idea. "Karkat? Buddy? Little introduction?"

Karkat manages to close his mouth and drop his sickle. "Megido, he's on our side. Davirk-"

You drop your shades. "Nah. Dave Strider. _Homo Sapiens_. That's the species you might've heard of that's gonna kick the Condesce's teeth in."

She doesn't answer, just stares at you, and you take a tentative step forward. You aren't picked up and tossed into the wall like a broken toy, so that's probably a good sign. Another and you're in range to deploy Maneuver: Handshake. Good god, you need to be around John again, you're getting dorkier to compensate for his absence.

She takes your hand. Physically weak for trolls is about as strong as an average human. You were kind of past that as yourself, and you're way beyond it now, but she still feels - strong.  
You think that might be her eyes. Are you just feeling hot? Because you think she might literally be able to light you on fire by looking at you, and that is an intense stare.  
Then she collapses. Karkat runs forward, but you already have a giant hand below each shoulder.

"What the fuck?" the midget demands while you help Aradia make a slightly more controlled descent. "Was that your goddamn masterful plan?"

"Yes. And then when you disappear after the powerful psychic clubbed Pyrope unconscious, she'll be looking for answers, and I'll provide them."

"Disappear fucking where?"

"I dunno, maybe one of those almost-impenetrable hidey-holes you woulda been in if you weren't putting your own neck on the chopping block for a friend. Again. You can ditch that ratty thing for a point-fold suit, set up a mimic wall, and chow down on pellet rations for a few days while I play this."

"No fucking way, Captain Badass. I'm not abandoning Aradia."

"No, you're not. You're leaving her with the guy that has access to only actual fucking clean place on this shithole of a planet, because Coalition meds can only do so much when you're sucking in lungfuls of carbon dust." You glance over at the subject of the conversation. "That alright with you?"

She takes a few strangled breaths before her bronchial respiratory sacs are working right. "Yeah. I'm very interested in you… _homo sapiens_."

"Not a goddamn concern about my health breathing this shit in?" Karkat grumbles, but he's already grabbing his sickle and digging in his robe for the point-fold suit, HCI's little prototype invisibility cloak present to us.

"Karkat, you're a candy-blooded mutant."

His head jerks up and his glare mixes rage and incredulity. "The fuck does-"

You smirk. "It means you're practically human. You'll be fine. I'd better grab Pyrope and start faking our battle scene. Megido, can you make it to-" You check your internal map. "Cargo Shaft T?"

"Yes." That is not a statement open to doubt or debate.

"Don't try and fly up or anything. I'll be there as soon as I can ditch Pyrope."

"I can't wait." That with a wry grin - and still, the same irrefutable certainty. And the same fire in her eyes.

Shit.

You need to find out if troll quadrant-monogamy is strictly enforced or if it's just kind of a social norm like on Earth. You really don't want to have to break Gamzee's heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOOM! Sneak flushed Dave/Aradia. At least, probably. This was also just about as planned as flushed Dave/Gamzee, so I'm not entirely sure how Dave's going to deal with them both. Guess we'll find out.


	4. The Other Side of the Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he remembers who he is, Dave is astonishigly good at improvisations. It's a badass rebel requirement. Goes along with falling for the girl at exactly the wrong time…

It's almost an anticlimax pulling it off, after all the tension in your mind, self-inflicted and otherwise. After you bruise yourself a couple times, slice up your face and arms with a few volcanic rocks, and snap your nodachi about halfway down, a groggy Pyrope entirely accepts your explanation that the rustblood went berserk, and the TK-rock assault plus the mutant held you off long enough for them to escape into the side tunnels. You keep up a good rant about "following these motherfuckers and ripping their guts out as a motherfuckin sampler", which has the desired result of aggravating Pyrope into ordering you to return to the surface. You fume the entire time you're in the overseer lift.

Underneath the stimulated adrenaline and rage, your mind has one precise, to-the-second timer: how long until you can convincingly blow off your duties in a pit of froth, go off looking for some rustbloods to terrorize, and go meet up with a particular carnelian-blooded dying psychic who will not leave your mind alone.

Pyrope dismisses you at the top of the pit shaft, although you pull the raging animal act on her a bit, swearing particular vengeance on the (left unnamed) Aradia and Karkat (who you add a particularly invective denunciation of freakbloods and mutants that you're sure he'll appreciate next time you're getting drunk. Dude has a respectable sense of irony and sarcasm). You make sure to push Pyrope to the edge of thinking you're a dangerous asset, but leave her with the impression you're still controllable by the time you annoy her enough to be dismissed.

Really, the rest of the plan is just a cakewalk. You're not some overtight violent indigo-blood clown cultist who can barely keep from splattering every gutterblood he sees. You're Dave motherfucking Strider wearing a mask and your shades are just these indigo-colored eyes jammed in your sockets (also the actual shades you wear over them). You're sitting behind a screen watching things unfold around this body and steering it with a joystick. You are Dave Strider inside, and Dave Strider is _slick_.

You have so much shit built into you, organic polymer theoretically-undetectable spy upgrades and mods. You have a two-item SOP when it comes to these. You're allowed to use them if 1: there are no Alternian witnesses, or 2: there will be no Alternian witnesses when you're done. You're not entirely sure if Karkat is excluded from these conditions, your briefer was kind of an asshat.

This is of course one of the major reasons you use your arm-integrated grappler and leg-integrated microjets to hurl yourself down the abandoned Cargo Shaft T, then balance out with a blast of airjets and land one knee down, one hand outstretched to touch the ground ( _fuck off, Head John, you didn't patent this move_ ). Because rules are for other espionage assholes, not you.

Your reward for your impressive display of acrobatic flipping and classified biotech is a slow clap of the maybe/maybe-not sarcastic variety. Aradia, slumped against the tunnel wall, smiles at you. Her teeth are as close to blunt as troll dentistry gets, and it's the nearest thing to a human smile you have seen in many, many months. Your human-with-slight-modifications heart skips a beat and the tiny little ball of homesickness you've been crushing with a billion years of emotional gravitational collapse pulls you over its event horizon. You stumble walking over to Aradia, catch yourself, miss a beat, fix your stance, and lean against the opposite tunnel wall, thumbs hooked in your belt.

"That doesn't look much like the usual Subjugglator garb," she says, cool and questioning. Her voice is still strong, still hints of echoing whispers, but it's scratched, sore-throated. "And you forgot your sword."

You sit down, _luxuriating_ in how even a troll-fit, armored HCI infiltration suit can be so comfortable. They're custom-tailored, in fact, so yours has auto-open/auto-reseal slits in the rear calves for your microjet implants and another in the sleeve for your grappling hook and microwire, plus dozens others for _necessary bio-integrated tools_ (you don't normally use the stick-up-ass mil/intel names for your gear, but that euphemism is too hilariously sinister to avoid). "I like to dress up for the first date-slash-prison-extraction." You pause and raise an eyebrow with a rakish grin (okay it would be rakish on your human face, you have no idea what it looks like as a troll, to a troll). "Do I _need_ a sword?"

Her smile returns. Crap, the heart/black hole again. You really just want to go home to ~~Earth~~ ~~Alternia~~   ~~Earth~~ ~~Alternia~~ ~~Earth~~. Fuck.

You know what, fuck home, you want to talk to this dying telekinetic alien. Who is coughing up her dark red blood. Shit, Dave, get your head in the game. You duck over to her side of the corridor and crouch a meter or two away from her. Do not be threatening towards the telekinetic. "You alright?"

With the only really, truly _relaxed_ smile you've ever seen on a troll (Gamzee… he's not relaxed. He's drugged, at best), she says, "I'm dying, Dave."

"Yeah, I hadn't let that one get past me. Just didn't know how fast. Tried to get Karkat to tell me a long time ago, but he didn't know. He got shipped off to that ice pit with barely thirty other trolls before he ever got to see a really old carnelian-blood, and he didn't last long there. Every day I bunked with that guy, though, he was terrified of any sign of age, spent an hour a day combing the mirror for wrinkles. He was positive he wouldn't live to see eleven sweeps."

"Carnelian-blood?" Oh, huh, that's an English word you just let slip in defiance of four fucking months of training and speaking exclusively in Alternian.

"Oxidation of metals didn't suit you. Carnelian's a dark red gemstone on my planet. One of the first things my ancestors put in jewelry."

"I seem to be more rust than gem these nights."

You are really not sure what to make of that. Bitterness? Longing? Wistfulness? Fatalism? "You don't look it," you mumble with something that might actually be unintentional charm. "You feel good enough to move?"

"Where are you going to hide me, Dave? I'm sure Terezi has an alert out for me by now that every drone and Mercenactor has received."

"I figured the Subjugglator quarters oughta be safe enough."

"Aren't there a couple more of them than you here?"

"Yeah. I'll kill them."

"You make it sound so easy." She pushes herself to her feet, but you can see the psychic energies holding her up.

"It will be. How strong are you, Aradia?"

She coughs, wipes away the blood. "My body is dying. At twelve sweeps old. But my power will keep growing until I die, and become someone else's."

"Become- sorry, what?"

"I take from the dead, Dave. They gift me, and I drain them, and when I die it will be the same with the next to have my gift."

"… is _that_ how it works?"

She giggles. You're reminded of college, of ISS training, of long lazy afternoons with a particle-physicist-in-training on her gene-father's private island. And yet, not the same. Maybe if you crossed one of your college lovers with Siddhartha Buddha (and added a dash of granite, ram's horns, and psychic powers), you'd get someone like Megido. She just… _knows_. It's reflected in her every word and movement, this certainty of what's going to happen and which part of it she's going to do. (And it sure as fuck ain't "give up and die like the gutterblood you are")

That… actually makes perfect sense. No fucking wonder she's dazzling you, she has the **purpose** you can't find anywhere in yourself. And she's a rebel mine worker, and you're a secret agent with genetic alterations and specific mission objectives. ~~_Dave, maybe it's time to admit you are kind of an aimless dude in general_~~. Shut it, Head John.

Shit, you spaced out while she was talking… only not, because Aradia is entirely quiet, a crooked little smile perking up her weary face while she waits for your eyes to focus. Goddamit, you're wearing shades, how can she tell?

"No, not quite. I am the only living _carnelian_ -blood who speaks to the dead. That's what makes my power so much greater than the others. And it's what's killing me far more painfully than age. When I die, the Mother Grub may birth another with my gift." She frowns lightly, just a quirk of the lips and you forcibly shut down any portion of your brain thinking the word adorable. _You are in enough fucking trouble already keep it in your goddamn pants Dave!_ "But it might be the dead that chose me, and will choose the next. It's one of the few things they won't tell me. We should get going, shouldn't we? How are we going to get out?"

Okay, a kind of abrupt conversation change but you think you're fine leaving the death-psychic explanations behind anyway. You clear your mind and refocus. "Grapnel. Suit gliders and thermals will get us airborne. Suit's low-profile/scatter-reflective. Anybody that sees us is just going to see another strange sickly cloud on this fiery hellhole."

"Clouds." Oh _Christ_ , Dave, stop it with the fucking heart-breaking sympathy here. You can act like such a fucking white knight when you're supposed to be a professional agent, ass.

Fuck it. You can at least be a dashing knight-errant. You rise, and offer your hand. "Let's go see some."

 

Flying with Aradia wrapped around your back, gliding from thermal to thermal with the aid of infrared imaging is… whatever, someone else can be terrified by the risk. You're Dave motherfucking Strider, and you surfed the skies of Gliese 581 e with a motherfucking god of wind once. This is just _fun_.

Although you don't think your passenger should be encouraging you to do "hooped treeflesh cylinder rolls". (You do one anyway. Just one, when you're sure you're not going to splat Karkat's friend in what would definitely be the least ironic death ever.)

You alight on one of the starport complex spires. "Probably the right place," you shrug, pushing in a glass window at the top of a very tall room.

"And if it's not, and someone sees a Subjugglator walking with a rust-blood, what's your plan, Dave?"

 ~~Say "killing" say killing SAY KILLING.~~ "Moving quick enough to make them think they're crazy and repress it. Now let's hop down while this room's empty. This swanky, it's gotta be the. Exarchutive's. Office."

You hate it when you're right. You also hate it when when you are proven right by Artyom Vladir, the Exarchutive of a planet you're theoretically both supposed to be terrorizing and protecing, to whom you're both caste-superior and yet subject to his Condesce-derived, legal authority, walking into his office, and then against all good dramatic sense and ground-dwelling species instinct, looking up and seeing you dangling through his window.

Nothing for it now. You drop, landing with only light jet-assistance, and you can see the glow of Aradia descending behind you.

He walks forward, pauses on the other side of his desk, leaning on it slightly with one hand. "I did not expect I would be meriting two Laughsassins, let alone two such diverse ones. Is the Legislacerator's trial not going to kill me quickly enough?" Skinny cerulean versus slightly less skinny and considerably stronger indigo, plus motherfuckin' _blazing_ carnelian psychic, what's he got besides trying to talk his way out of it? Or at least give a nice epitaph.

You straighten up, grin, and shake your head, then take a risk. "Nah, bro. We ain't runnin' Pyrope's errands or the Condesce's. We're with KV."

"Is this so?" He maintains his posture on the desk - weapon or guard alert within armspan, obviously.

"Yeah. There ain't gonna be a functional plan if everybody don't know their job, now is there?" There isn't a functional plan and you're not sure anybody knows their job. Especially you.

"And what "job" did you have for me, Subjugglator?" He doesn't even pause at the title, you gotta give Vladir that. Guts, insanity, or a damn good contingency.

"The way I hear the plan's working is starting in five nights, we gotta have every ore-hauler that parks the next week. Impounded, detained, confiscated, quarantined, whatever."

"Why?" Like he's just academically curious about you needing him to basically shut down the only thing that makes his planet or post at all useful to the Empire.

"When KV tells me he needs something, I don't ask him why." Truth. You force him to tell you. "But I know the plan's gotta be big to work." Also truth, but you see no reason to tell Vladir his safety is only a minor side objective to you.

"And Pyrope?"

"I got her or KV does." At his raised eyebrow you sneer. "You think all I gotta play with is some chucklevoodoos and killin? KV don't take just every indigo for the Front." Also true, because the Free Alternian Front doesn't actually have any real indigo-bloods in it. "You see me with Pyrope you play along and give her what she wants. I'll keep her from getting anything useful."

"Then I suppose we have everything arranged."

"Yup."

You love shades. Yes, they don't let anyone see your eyes. That's the least of what any of _your_ lenses do.

You turn and walk away from the door and push aside the wall. A glance from the rear-view cameras in your lenses shows Vladir's reaction as a minor stiffening of his joints while you walk into his secret escape tunnel. Brass balls, that guy.

The silence of your footsteps is broken by Aradia's laughter, and the carnelian psychic leans a hand on your shoulder. "That was great!"

You can't help the smile. "That is how you do my job the Dave Strider way."

"There isn't any plan, is there?"

"Oh, there's a plan," you say, while prying up the slab of concrete covering an entrance to the hidden servant passageways. "It's just my plan. I should probably tell Karkat at some point, we're going to need his help." Hm, there's really no non-awkward way to say this, is there. "And yours. Are you still going to be alive in ten days?"

With a calm smile that says she knew exactly what you were going to say, Aradia responds, "That's entirely up to you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes I have been playing a lot of Metro 2033 why do you ask?
> 
> Also, Dave can get homesick for Alternia despite never being there thanks to some experimental memory-mapping from Karkat and Equius that's good enough to fake it. Even for himself.


	5. Improvisational Espionage 102

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave passed the intro class, now let's see how he handles Professor Pyrope's advanced course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Dave mentions fucking Karkat in this chapter. If that's an issue for you… wow, you are definitely on the wrong website.

**3733 hours after first Terran-Alternian hostiliies**   
**[HCI Encryption Sigma]**   
KV: STRIDER WHY THE FUCK AM I GETTING DEAD DROP MESSAGES THAT THE EXARCHUTIVE AGREES WITH MY PLAN?   
DS: well i fully understand your surprise dude  
DS: not like you ever really had a plan  
DS: jumpin head-first into shark-infested waters that sounds like a karkat plan   
AM: he's right, don't even try t0 deny it   
KV: WHAT THE FUCK? STRIDER YOU INCOMPETENT ASS WHAT KIND OF INSECURE COMMUNICATION DEVICE DO YOU HAVE HER ON?   
DS: dude read the fucking implant display some time  
DS: we are sigma level coded out the rectal side  
DS: because aradia is also using an hci implant   
KV: I AM GOING TO REPEAT MY WHAT THE FUCK.   
DS: i brought a spare   
KV: THEY GAVE YOU A SPARE ENCRYPTED-COMMUNICATION FULL FUNCTION HCI TROLL-COMPATIBLE IMPLANT, AND NOT ME? THAT WOULD ONLY BE SLIGHTLY USEFUL IN TERMS OF COORDINATING REBEL CELLS, AFTER ALL.   
DS: i didnt say they gave me shit  
DS: i also didnt say certain inventory lists might be one or six items short so you cant testify jack   
KV: HOW DID YOU EVEN FUCKING INSTALL- NO JESUS SUFFERER I DON'T WANT TO KNOW.   
DS: dude you fucking kidding  
DS: i admit my dj/pilot/swordsmans hands are as fluid and precise as any being terran or alternian might ever manage  
DS: but no she fuckin drilled the hole herself.   
KV: WHAT. ARADIA ARE YOU INSANE?   
AM: n0, karkat, im just dying  
AM: i have felt much much w0rse pain bef0re  
AM: many times bef0re   
KV: ...   
DS: awkward  
DS: anyhow karkat the plan has kind of sort of been expanded   
KV: EXPANDED HOW?   
DS: were going to be stealing the planet now   
AM: this is g0ing to be s0 much fun

You end up going back on your word just a bit: Aradia kills Pintar and Kiirdu, because it synchs better with your story. Then she makes them telekinetically dance like puppets in a faux-fight against you until you kill them. Cover reinforced.

You almost forget the plan entirely when she's ducking into the secret passages, swings around, grabs your shirt, and drags you in for a quick kiss. "I don't know if I can hear the human dead, so stay alive."

"Uh. Yeah. Definitely." _Not gonna follow her, not gonna follow her_ … okay, good, you do have some self-restraint.

A list of the people currently carnally interested in Dave Strider: a dying telekinetic of the most powerful degree, a drugged-out murderclown a planet away who might not have noticed he's even gone yet, and periodically, a candy-red mutant who, after watching about six million romantic comedies, finally gets the idea of no-strings casual sex.

None of this can end well. Except maybe Karkat, he has zero interest in a long-term relationship and is probably only into you because you're the first person to want him since he was outed as a mutant- aaaand there we go you are taking advantage of him.

None of this can end well.

 

Contacting Pyrope the right way takes set-up, but it isn't difficult at all. You spend half the night interrogating lowblood servants in the starport complex while stained in indigo, then checking the docking logs manually. When you thump on the Neophyte Legislacerator's door, you get a "Come in, Siberi," before you can raise your fist a second time.

You gotta give her credit, Pyrope doesn't live in stolen luxury or anything. Not like the blind got a lot of use for garish curtains, original paintings, rare art (okay you guess they could appreciate sculpture). Still, the place is completely minimalist. Desk, chair, recuperacoon, husktop. Grey concrete structure.

On the other hand, Pyrope seems to have made up for the lack of decoration herself. Something midway between H. R. Geiger, Hieronymous Bosch, and childhood chalk scribbles covers every wall, the ceiling, the floor (severely smudged but that kind of adds to the effect). Her blindness only adds to the macabre perfection. The eyes of the hanged rest off their faces, the limbs of the dying contort non-Euclideanly. Davirk admires the subject matter. Dave appreciates the poetic nature of the blind artist, and also appreciates she is clearly batshit insane.

_~~You had your fucking skin regrown, bones removed, face reshapes, eyes replaced, mind remade because you **couldn't think of anything better to do** , who's the insane one again?~~ _

You decide to take the lead. "So, Neophyte." You lean against the wall and shrug languidly. "Seen through my cover yet?"

She cackles, and the shark teeth come out. "Game over? But it was fun! I want to play again. Pretending you weren't pretending to be a Subjugglator was so engaging!"

"We can play guessing games. You know what I really am?"

"You're no indigo-blood." She waves her cane over her desk in a scolding motion.

"Yes and no. I was made as one, but not by the Mother Grub." Keep talking, blur statements together, let the truth and lies become so tangled nobody can sort them properly. "See I happen to be a motherfuckin special project. Her Imperial Condescension's  Geneticarcerators gotta play around every now and then, test the strength of the blood against that mutant - larval friend of yours, wasn't he?" Incitement, not question. Continue before she can force in an answer. "I'm indigo all the way down to the vascular pumping organ, I'm just no clown cultist and no real Subjugglator. And I'm not just here to run your errands." Now pause, let her take it in all at once, hope the strands of lies And truth lead to the right place.

"Is this a pre-killing speech? Did Pintar and Iskart get it too?" She's giggling while she says it. Close enough.

"Not a bit, cuz they motherfuckin jumped me. Seems there's a buncha psychic highbloods think they're too _special_ for the rightful order, think her Imperial Condescension is holding them back. And these motherfuckers were my only fucking lead, what I was cultivating nice and slowly, till something with you and the rust-blood and the mutant set 'em off." You step forward and lean down on the desk, looming as big as you can, bearing your teeth but keeping your voice sharp, not bloody. You're smart, you're an agent, you're not working for who she thinks you are but it's plausible enough, now _sell it_. "And so I think you fuckin owe me Pyrope, so you can dig through everything crammed in your think pan and find me some other gogdamn lead on whatever the fuck is Project Mindfang."

There. Freeze, twitch, tightened grip, white knuckles, barely an instant but _you got her_.

"If you just wanted to kill some other Subjugglators you could have skipped the story, Davirk, I don't really care."

"I just want to make my handlers happy by finding his fucking conspiracy and ripping it out through the waste chute," you counter with just enough anger. "Let me know when you find something, Pyrope. I'm going hunting for those fuckin red-bloods. They gotta know somethin."

 

Well, of course they do, but you sincerely doubt Terezi has any idea what you want to hear from them or how you're going to hear it

**[HCI ENCRYPTION SIGMA]**   
KV: SIGNLESS CHRIST, STRIDER, WHY ARE WE COMMING? ISN'T TEREZI GOING TO BE SHOVING HER NOSE INTO EVERY POSSIBLE WAVELENGTH GIVEN THE HINT OF VRISKA YOU DANGLED IN FRONT OF HER?   
DS: sure probably  
DS: sigma encrypt is a variable power transmission tho  
DS: masked as multiple separate high-power transmissions and low-power transmissions between different places  
DS: so i figure we got plenty of confusion  
DS: that and the fake interstellar mindfang transmitters i got jammed into obscure locations all over the complex  
DS: thanks for setting those up aradia   
AM: n0 pr0blem. n0b0dy saw a thing   
KV: ALRIGHT WHATEVER. WHAT DID YOU WANT STRIDER, I'M BUSY WITH THE LAST PART OF YOUR BATSHIT FROTHING PLAN.   
AM: (bat?)   
DS: screeching wingbeast   
KV: HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU THE ONE EXPLAINING EARTH TERMS TO AN ALTERNIAN. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHEN I GOT TO THIS POINT WHERE NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE.   
DS: i dunno  
DS: birth?   
AM: hehe. daves g0t y0u pegged karkat.   
KV: HOW-AUGH. WHAT THE FUCK STRIDER?   
DS: she means in the idiom sense karks dude relax  
DS: ive just been sharing a lil bit of the vast and amazing cultural repertoire of earth with aradia  
DS: didnt tell her anything about our days of hot hedonistic passion  
DS: oh if the terms are pissin you off that much you can top next time we do penetration   
AM: 0_0   
KV: THANK YOU FROM THE DEEPEST CHAMBER OF MY VASCULAR PUMPING ORGAN STRIDER. THAT WAS A COMPLETELY APPROPRIATE THING TO SHARE DURING A MISSION BRIEFING.   
DS: no but it was fuckin funny  
DS: were in this together karks  
DS: no reason to be secretive with each other   
KV: THE REAL SECTION LEADERS, THE ONES OUR PEOPLE PICKED NOT THE ONES SELLING OUT FOR THIRTY PIECES TO THE HEMOSPECTRUM, ARE ALL AGREED AND SETTING UP THE SIGNALS AND ROUTES FOR THEIR PEOPLE OKAY BRIEFING ENDED BYE.   
**Karkat Vantas has disconnected:** JEGUS SUFFERER STRIDER WHAT THE FUCK   
AM: w0w dave  
AM: i did n0t picture y0u and karkat as flushed   
DS: were not  
DS: we just fuck sometimes   
AM: ummm 0_0

This may take even more time to explain than it did to Karkat. Still, you guess it makes a nice distraction from your crawling over the outside of the complex keeping an eye on Pyrope through the windows.

 

She finds a transmitter. You detonate it before she can figure out where it came from.

She takes it to the wrong mechanist, the one you haven't bribed. You trigger a cell of Karkat's to attack the shop and trash the evidence, volunteers under post-hypnotic suggestion and psychoactive programming that should mimic mind control.

She latches onto the workgang boss from one of the suicide attackers, who's one of your best guys, and knows way too much to submit to questioning. You get the go-ahead from Karkat, and with a little poison he becomes a quiet martyr.

She goes after Artyom Vladir again, and you have his private skiff launched, after Aradia puppets the docking and surveillance control team into a mutual death duel.

Being the good guy human doesn't really seem to involve less killing than being the evil troll sociopath.

AM: d0es it scare y0u   
DS: since its you asking im gonna assume you mean death as a general concept   
AM: yup   
DS: no  
DS: why should it  
DS: ill die when i feel good and ready to die  
DS: other people cant handle that they should make their own destinies  
DS: ones that dont involve dealing with me   
AM: the universe might have 0ther plans, dave   
DS: it can learn to fucking cope  
DS: and that goes double for you   
AM: s0rry, what?   
DS: you can learn to deal with you not dying  
DS: i decided that shit doesnt work for us  
DS: tragic heroism is stupid  
DS: so get used to being alive   
AM: i kn0w when im g0ing t0 die, dave  
AM: its n0t a matter 0f wanting   
DS: just tell the dead one thing  
DS: they can sit down and shut the fuck up because dave strider is talking

That conversation ends there, but Aradia's smile reaches through to her eyes next time you see her.

 

Eventually, Terezi comes to you. "There is conspiracy here!"

You look up from your slump on the floor. "No. Fuckin'. Kiddin'."

"The red mutants were always the easy ones for her to control. I am only surprised she could resist taunting me!"

You lever yourself up with lanky arms and stand. "You mind tellin' me who she is anyhow?"

"Vriska Serket." There is venom in that voice. That's the kind of hate you go on quests for, the kind of hate you build an entire life around.

She goes on to explain pretty much everything you know or have spoon-fed her. Except… fuck.

"She wasn't in that skiff?" you growl like a conspiracy-hunter should. You were really hoping Pyrope would take the bait.

"Vriska would never be so obvious. A mere ruse!"

"So she's still here."

"Yes, definitely!"

"Keep her from leaving then. Quarantine the population, do blood checks, you'll find her wherever she is."

"She can hide in crowds! She can even use them. All these lowbloods. Mines and tunnels and passages! It's not the right place to confront her. She's too crafty! Too lucky."

"So, I dunno. The ore haulers. Stash the rustbloods in there to keep 'em under control."

She frowns and her cane whisks across the air where your hand would be if you didn't see this coming. "And when she takes over an entire cargo hold of lowbloods?"

You smirk. "Then I get fun. That one rustblood psychic's the only one on this rock that even bothers me. I can kill five thousand regulars without a sweat." Truth, although you're trying really, really hard to keep the discussion to what you _could_ do rather than what you _will_ do. You don't really want to know the truth on that one.

"You know you are suggesting to a Legislacerator that a vital colony's operations end because of a "secret mission"."

You stand. "Yeah. And you catch this Serket-Mindfang. There a problem?"

"Nope! Heh heh heh." She's uncomfortably close to you. Not that the sword would do much good at this distance, or that her teeth would really get through your skin, but… god, you're just fucking twitchy, like you're going to start choking her without even trying.

She grabs your shirt, and drags your head down to her level. "Mindfang is _mine_."

"Only if you get to her first. There's going to be blood, Neophyte. Better hope it ain't too much of yours." And for some reason you move in, and so does she, and the troll-(technically)human makeout is especially sloppy, and most importantly,  _Oh, so **that's** what kismesis is._

Damn, you've probably been misreading some signs. Theory vs practice and all. Oh well. Most of the Subjuggators you killed weren't even that hateable, not like this self-righteous hypocritical "justice"-obsessed blind oligarchy enforcer… whoa, watch the bone bulge, buddy.

So. Complications. Meh. You're going to worry about them in the evening.


	6. If You Can Read This, You May Be Insane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can only drag out the plan's implementation so long before you reach the showdown.
> 
> And you can only hear them so long and remain sane.

**?#œœ¿ hh-hours after time time before**  
"John, what the fuck are you doing? Being a troll is my gig, dammit."

He leans away from the balcony of the Exarchutive's office, and his crystal-blue eyes are boring through your shades until they just evaporate. "But I'm so much better at it, Dave." His tongue snakes between teeth like volcanic spires, great grey hands caress low-slung massive curling horns like boar tusks. "I know who I am. But you were always the uncertain one, Strider. The mutant outlier in the experimental group. Did you flip a coin to decide whether to follow me or Jade?"

"I made my own fucking decision, ass," you say, and you'd shove this little blueblood back, if he wasn't taller than you, and the crimson blood wasn't shining through your grey-pink skin. "I'm here because I can lie when I have to. Because I am a goddamn _brilliant_ liar. You like my plan?"

"Can you call it that?" he asks, and steps back off the balcony, levitating over the Antarctic ISS Launch Station. "Seems like you're just making things up as you go."

You drop your suit helmet and glare at him, arms crossed. "It's what it has to be. Why do you care, whoever you are?"

Troll John merely flickers, and you see two things. He is John, and he is the other, the thing speaking through him and wearing him. That one you will not describe. "Because you must succeed, David."

"Nope. Fuck y'all." You turn around and fuck, you took three lucid dreaming modules while you were in ISS training, why aren't you waking up.

"Dave." You stiffen at Rose's touch because you know you know you _know_ it's not her. Or maybe you don't stiffen because you know it's not... fuck, you don't want to go over this again. "You chose to be Dave. We are sorry we have not respected that."

"Damn fucking straight." You can't leave but maybe you can... _twist_. Sehzar's architecture on Earth's unclaimed continent break flicker away, dopplering off behind you. You look straight ahead at the puppet, because you know you won't get your eyes back if you look away.

"We need you, Dave. The dead will need you."

Something pithy about everyone needing a piece of the Strider falls flat in your mouth. "How am I supposed to help? I don't _know_ myself."

"That is how you will help. When the time is right, that's what you have to be." Dirk looks over his shades, the universal Strider signal for a reproachful _you should know this already_. You look down not out of shame, but to avoid seeing the obsidian orbs in his eye sockets. "Between."

"You're not fucking real." You wave your arms around in the darkness, outrage outweighing the fear of touching something. " **You're not fucking real!** You're the fragments I'm making up out of half-realities."

"Of course. But that doesn't mean we can't touch your reality. Ask the Condesce how much we can do."

"Yeah, I'll put that on my list. Is this enough? Can I go yet?" You can _feel_ the overwhelming sense of abject nothingness that their presence evokes, that it always has. Whatever. Rose can luxuriate in that Yog Sothothery crap. You're not going to meekly bow your head at the entities greater than you, whose very existence renders your beliefs, your actions pointless, who do naught but reveal the truth that there is no point to humankind or anything you do.

Why? Because _fuck them_.

There's a hand on your shoulder, and it's John's-Bro's-Jade's-Rose's-Karkat's- _theirs_. And they let the puppet mask fall off.

##  Is alien evil, Dave?

"There's no such goddamn thing as an evil being. Just bad shit you do. Don't you fucking know that?"

## We are your species' fears. We are the nightmares that dwelled in the growing minds of hominids on the African savannah when they saw the stars and wondered what they held. We are the terror that stalks the days of trolls throughout all their worlds, the connection made by their long-forgotten choice.

They are closer. They are touching you, and there is a pain to it, to the incompatibility, to the _longing to be close that can never be_.

## That does not mean we do not love you.

 **3899 hours after first Terran-Alternian hostilities**  
Waking up in a dazed furor isn't new for troll Dave. It wasn't new for regular old average-joe genetic experiment malfunction questionable-sanity Dave either. And it doesn't seem to bother the other occupant of the recuperacoon, who mumbles something in her sleep and rolls over.

You lean on the edge and take a deep sigh. You're rewarded for it by claws scraping down your back, that gets a slightly shallower sigh.

"You're not used to kismesis at _all_. You actually are a freak! Heh heh heh."

You reach back and shove Pyrope under the sopor for a couple dozen seconds, until her clawing gets frantic enough. "Hardly intended to have your experiment out filling the genetic material bucket, huh?"

She coughs out a couple globs of sopor before retorting, "Bah! You don't know how to hate right, Mr. Sour Grape."

"Say that again and I'll show you hate." It's half-hearted, though. Even with the slashes from Pyrope's claws, being awake is somehow soothing. You're probably completely fucking insane because a being beyond description that best approximates the results of a squid fucking a black hole told you in a dream that it loves you, and it calmed you down, but whatever. "No. I don't have passion for hate. Hate is for weakness, the weak are for killing. What's there to be passionate about?"

You are over two meters and a hundred thirty kilos and you are suddenly on your back against the recuperacoon's wall with a scrawny teal troll straddling you. " _Everything_. Dying is a weakness, and it must be _punished_. Killing without passion, without agony, sends no message."

"A message to the dead? Why bother?"

"The message is **Justice** ," she says as if you hadn't said a damn thing. "The dead will remember and the living will be reminded."

"What's so just about pain?" _Jesus fuck Dave do you have any good instincts? Playing Devil's Advocate like you're in a 3 AM discussion with John in your dorm is **not conductive to your fucking cover**_

Terezi, however, seems to have been waiting for this. "Pain is the ultimate leveler!"

"Thought that was death."

"No! Death comes to everyone equally. When they are dead they are dead! But pain - this is justice. The rustblood can only suffer a little pain before he dies. But a criminal blueblood, a rebel seadweller? They can survive so much longer, under such greater agony. And so we are made a just race." Her blind grin is directed a few degrees above your head but holy shit you do not want her attention right now. ~~Yes you do. You want her more than _anything_ right now because _you can see it now_ , you can see the little childhood seed of caring, of what you know is justice, and you can see all the gross and twisted mutations that this culture has grown around it and you just want to TEAR THEM UP AND RIP HER APART UNTIL YOU HAVE THAT CORE, THAT LITTLE SEED OF TRUTH AND RIGHTFULNESS TO HOLD AND KEEP~~.

Holy fuck, did your indigo instincts just tell you to go bust out an emotional-therapeutic rampage on Terezi? Yeah, you definitely have some psych issues to work out when this mission is over. Talk. Remember to talk.

"What're we doing for Serket?"

"You are a cunning one! The ore haulers are what Vladir has used to sell his surplus workers, in any case, I am certain of it!" Well. She might've figured out what Karkat's been up to, but you don't really expect the psychotic of order to understand his motivations. "The drones have begun to empty the outer mines, and I have ordered all ships halted! We will sort every body on this planet and _find Serket_!"

She leans in and bites your neck with that last growl, and you think given her feelings this is probably blackrom infidelity.

Meh. Like you're one to talk.

 

**[ENCRYPTION B/D/E]**   
DS: switched us to burrow/drop/erase  
DS: were end game here  
DS: karkat you got numbers   
KV: 6331 OF THE 6545 OUTER MINE WORKERS ARE IN QUARANTINE. SHE HAS DRONES SURROUNDING THE CORE MINE ALREADY.   
DS: aradia  
DS: whats the word on artyom   
AM: hes staying calm and n0t m0ving  
AM: but his l0yal guard is better equipped from n0t-s0-0bvi0us s0urces   
DS: alright  
DS: still think hes a bit of a free player  
DS: just gotta make sure our offer is better than tzs the condesces and the entire empires   
KV: THAT SHOULD BE EASY.  
KV: "HEY, WOULD YOU LIKE TO ABANDON YOUR LUXURIOUS POST FOR A REBELLION IN WHICH WHATEVER FUCKING COLOR BLOOD YOU BUILT YOUR ENTIRE EGO ON MEANS NOTHING?"  
KV: BRIBING THIS GUY WAS ONE THING, STRIDER, WHY DO YOU THINK HE'S ANY MORE USE TO US? WE SHOULD TAKE HIM OUT BEFORE TEREZI CAN TRACE US THROUGH HIM.  
KV: WAIT A FUCKING SECOND, TZ?  
KV: YOU'RE FUCKING HER AREN'T YOU.   
DS: sorry i havent brought her home to dinner dad  
DS: i know you dont like me having caliginous flings on the other side of the tracks   
KV: JESUS SUFFERER, STRIDER, CENTURIES-OLD AMERICAN REFERENCES ARE NOT "THE NEW STYLE".   
DS: jealous   
KV: I AM NOT EVEN REMOTELY JEALOUS OF ANY PART OF YOUR SELF-IMPOSED IDIOCY!   
AM: b0ys. shut the fuck up. 0V0.  
AM: what ab0ut the dr0nes?   
DS: okay yeah theyre kind of the real threat   
KV: IT'S HARD TO TELL, OKAY.  
KV: FUCKING IDENTICAL BIOCONSTRUCTS. BEST GUESS: 4000, PLUS/MINUS 500.   
DS: and the amount of guys we have that can vaguely approximate actual trained soldiers is  
DS: lemme check my notes  
DS: about eleven hundred  
DS: mostly skinny and starved  
DS: okay that leaves a thousand drones for each of us  
DS: sounds viable right   
AM: it will w0rk.   
DS: thanks, ara   
AM: until it d0esnt   
DS: or that  
DS: whatever  
DS: i want to talk to you bout this fatalism shit before we launch  
DS: but you know i think were actually fuckin ready  
DS: pyropes gonna start filtering in about thirty hours  
DS: cells in position and armed, karks   
KV: YOU BETTER FUCKING BELIEVE THEY ARE. WHILE YOU GOT TO TROMP AROUND KILLING SUBJUGGLATORS AND FLIRTING WITH EVERYONE WARMER THAN SEADWELLERS.   
DS: i got a bit past flirting actually  
DS: with pretty much everyone   
KV: I HATE YOU SOMETIMES.   
DS: i know karks  
DS: i know  
DS: the nonhate times are fun too.   
AM: 0u0  
AM: that l00ks silly.  
AM: let it be underst00d im happy with the dave situati0n.   
KV: FUCK YOUR LUCK STRIDER.   
DS: dude im happy to be your backup but youll be alright   
KV: NO NO FUCKING SUGGESTING I "DATE" HUMANS AGAIN   
DS: there are twenty billion redblooded bipedal hotties out there  
DS: your anti-pinky/light brown/dark brown/yellowish/sorta ruddy/pale-as-shit skin bigotry is kind of a turnoff though   
KV: I WANT TO HAVE RELATIONS WITH MY OWN SPECIES OKAY.  
KV: YOURSELF EXCLUDED OR SOMETHING, FUCK. I DON'T KNOW OR CARE.   
DS: the dave strider appeal  
DS: tzs buzzing me  
DS: phase b ready   
KV: ABSO-FUCKING-LUTELY.  
KV: AND DAVE.  
KV: AS MY FRIEND AND OCCASIONAL HOLE-FILLER/FILLEE.  
KV: DO ME A FAVOR.  
KV: THE LAST TIME YOU'RE PAILING TEREZI.  
KV: SAY MY NAME.   
DS: dude you are vindictive and hilarious  
DS: absolutely   
AM: y0u tw0 may be taking blackr0m infidelity a little t00 far.   
DS: dave strider guarantee  
DS: i never go less a hundred meters beyond the line of good taste   
AM: its g0ing t0 crash and burn.  
AM: and im n0t being metaph0rical.  
AM: but y0u actually want that d0nt you?   
DS: yup   
KV: YUP.   
AM: 0kay b0ys. t0 vict0ry 0V0

 

You escort Terezi, with both of you very pointedly avoiding any public expressions of black emotion, to the Exarchutive's office. You pass four guards. You could take 'em. You prefer to think that they know they're on your side if it comes down to that.  
Somehow you doubt it.

Exarchutive Artyom Vladir is at his desk when you enter, and betrays nothing when he looks up.

"Neophyte. Subjugglator. What may I do for you?"

He does twitch when she leans over his desk and licks his forehead, but restrains himself. She steps back and draws her swordcane. "How long did you think you could keep me blind to it?"

He opens his mouth, but that pauses at a gesture - from you. "Dunno. Coulda got you off this rock, or gotten off it and left you sniffing at holes. How'd you figure?"

"Her smell isn't _here_. And she could never stand to be less than the best. She would have assaulted him even if she didn't think she could win. I knew you were lying. Now I know you were lying about Vriska. And what else?"

You draw your sword with a casual flick out of its sheath. "Just enough. Your witness is hostile, Legislacerator. Come cut out his testimony."


	7. Massive Systemic Hemorrhaging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When everything breaks down.

Of course you're not going to fight Terezi alone. You don't mean that in the sense of "you're going to wait until you have allies", you mean "in the time it took you to draw your sword two Imperial Drones smashed through the window and probably every other one on the planet is right behind them."

Which isn't to say you don't have friends. The door to the secret passage explodes outward, contacts a drone, and introduces it to the opposite wall. Aradia sort of hovers through, one arm raises in a tight fist, flung suddenly to the side, and the slab of door crashes out through the windows into the flight of incoming drones. Wearing a jet-black HCI "Revenant" Skirmisher Suit, soft-form skull-painted mask tugged over her head between her horns, hair rippling behind her and crackling with telekinetic power, she makes a pretty fucking good Angel of Death.

You give her an appreciative nod, then jerk your head at Terezi. "I got her." Aradia doesn't answer, but a faint telekinetic force grips your chest for a brief second.

"You _are_ working with the lowbloods!" Pyrope cackles, her near-skeletal frame twisting in impossible ways to avoid the blows of your mighty nodachi that her swordcane can barely deflect. "How did Karkles manage to get an indigo buried in his useless, petty rebellion?"

"He's very persuasive," you respond, hands blurring as you tilt your swordguard to block a rapid series of jabs.

"Damn fucking right I am!" declares a snarling, grumbling voice you've missed far too much, slamming the doors shut behind him. Streaks of the black petroleum-like goo that works as drone blood cover his arms. "I was hoping to save our showdown for later, Rez, but you just gotta keep pushing." He does a bit of pushing himself, dragging down the nearest furniture to barricade the doors. Artyom Vladir doesn't have a reaction ready - he's ignoring all three of you and frantically using his desk console.

Terezi slides against the wall to a position equally distant to you and Karkat, without seeming worried or like she's retreating at all. You're not terribly surprised. Pyrope is the kind of lunatic who wouldn't mind dying if five thousand drones turned you into pulp right afterward.

"This seems kinda unfair, Karks. Maybe we should just let her fight whoever she hates the most," you comment with a smirk.

He spins his sickle around, and you try not to lose yourself in the beauty of the blade's motion. "Fine by me. How about you, Rez? It's been a long time since we were flushed. Long enough for red to twist and break and corrode into black."

Terezi says nothing, but her mouth is a thin line. You can almost feel the lingering strands of pity being snapped by Karkat's words. "You're mine, mutant."

You shrug. "Fair's fair. I want that favor vice-versa, Karks," you add with a pointed finger and a grin.

"If there's anything left to scrape in a bucket, maybe."

You walk off, whistling, towards Vladir's desk while the sound of clashing of blades erupts behind you. The Exarchutive looks up and locks eyes with you. His facade is mostly intact, even in the face of the chaos surrounding him. But his eyes have something between desperation and pleading, if you can impart those emotions to trolls.  
You walk past him with a pat on the shoulder, and step up to the window.

Now this is a show. Supported by the shoulder-mounted ten-meter-span reverberating-field airfoils - or, to the uneducated observer, wings of fire - Aradia resembles the conductor of a very percussion-heavy orchestra, with sweeping motions hammering concrete to drones to drones. But she's got a pretty enthusiastic audience, and there's only so many encores one performer can pull off. Wait, are the drones the instruments or the audience, and is she the conductor or- you can hear Bro's most exaggerated Texas drawl, _Momma done told you not to go mixin' metaphors, Davey_.

You really wish these fuckers were just robots. The ease of producing rounds that can penetrate a Faraday Cage and generate a powerful EMP aside, the bio-mechanical components are _just fucking creepy_. And this is from the guy who hasn't had a month without a dream about the reality-reaming beings from beyond since you were what, thirteen? Fucking crab-insect-robots.

Well, as much as trolls love stabbing and smashing and all that bloody close-up shit, you came equipped with _your_ civilization's idea of sufficient weaponry. Ripping off the Subjugglator baggy shirt and polka-dot pants, you test your systems interface with an HCI/Earthfleet BEL Suit. The Behind-Enemy-Lines armor is the most blatant, hardest to hide, and single most risky thing for you to have stolen from agency storage and smuggled into Alternian space.  
This is because a BEL only barely skirts the line between stealth suit and combat armor. It has emission dampeners, low-profile angles, and an EM activity screen, but they're all wrapped around a micro-fusion power core. It's not made for stealth operations - it's made for staying quiet on a strategic scale while providing localized devastation.

You raise both arms of the suit, flip through the controls with muttered commands, and turn off the safety regulations on the heat sinks for the wrist-mounted field projectors.  
You clench your fists.

You have the aiming software off, because there's no point. Imperial Drones fill the sky, and you just pump erratic fields out as fast as the projectors can stabilize them enough to reach the enemy. Dozens drop within seconds, and you feel your arms starting to singe (human skin would already be up to second-degree burns).

It doesn't even remotely matter.

DS: be honest with me  
DS: we gonna die here?  
AM: n0.  
DS: absolute no?  
AM: thats what im t0ld  
DS: comforting  
AM: d0nt w0rry dave  
AM: there are a l0t 0f w0rse ways t0 die  
DS: believe me i know  
DS: alright pull back and lets try to choke them

Aradia swoops down, throwing up a massive plane of force to push the drones back a bit, and peels off her skull mask. The airfoil fields flicker and shut off, leaving crackling hisses. In the sudden absence of telekinetic hammering you can hear the ringing of swords. "That was very useful, Dave. Not having to fly saved my strength," Aradia says, and plants a kiss on your exposed neck as she steps behind you. Just a glimpse of her face is enough to ~~freeze you with the terror of losing someone you care about, even if you want to pretend it's casual, even if you're sure you're going to die first~~ concern you. Her eyes are half-opened, sweat drips down her face, and the skin around her horns is stretched back, revealing a little greyish-red dermis.

Okay. Your turn to suffer for the cause, Dave. That going to be a problem? "Sir, no sir," you answer out loud, pause for a moment to yank your helmet on, then snap out commands to the suit. "Wide dispersal, increase magnitude to 150%, decrease stability to 33%. Override safety protocols."

You fire.

Hell leaps from your arms - and envelops them too. You grit your teeth and still roar through their clench to keep from screaming as your skin burns.

But a storm of agitated particles is jumping out of your wrists, spraying the entire windowed wall with enough unstable molecules to devastate a city block. Drones drop, stagger, _melt_ in the face of your fury, _all of them_ , more just charging in to suffer further destruction and all it's costing is _~~RAW UNENDING AGONY OH GOD OH JESUS FUCK~~ _a little pain. You can weather it. You c-__

You can be on your knees, arms dropping as pure lucky instinct forces your hands open and stops the fire. You turn your dazed head to try and find your assailant, but it pops up all over your helmet display - system shock to extremities forced you to dampen your CNS-muscle system interface, and you lost control of your legs just enough to stumble.

The drones are coming. Aradia, skull helm up, glowing red again and making a grimace of pain you can just imagine you're mirroring, yanks you up with hands and telekinesis. You can't hear the clash of blades any more. Either Karkat's dead now or he'll die with the rest of you.

Unending blindness and a roar beyond imagining. Your helmet filters the brightness and sound but it can do nothing for the heat. Aradia snarls in pain, like a wounded mountain lion. Someone shouts behind you.

A metal shield wall slams up from the floor, shutting off the actinic agony outside.

The loudest noise now, above the muted and quieting roar outside, is Artyom Vladir slumping back in his chair.

You look over quickly - Karkat bloody from a hundred cuts, but Terezi jammed against the wall with his sickle at her neck. A nearly year-old memory flashes through your mind, and you think _Yeah, but good luck finding your own two-meter adorkable blue-eyed boy to knock him out, Pyrope_.

"What did you do?" you ask Vladir, popping your suit arms open. Smoke and, judging by the wrinkle of Aradia's nose, the smell of burnt flesh, seep out.

"Remote-controlled a hauler. And turned it on its engines." Okay. Note to self, Dave, your side is the one crazy enough to fire starship engines about a hundred meters away. Look into joining the Empire as soon as possible.

"Still got it?"

"Yes. It's not made for this, and I haven't flown anything that size-"

"Don't need to be precise." You glance over to check Karkat's opinion, but teal and scarlet are mingling on the ground, and he has Terezi pinned against the wall in handcuffs and a lip-lock. "Throw it into the core mine."

Vladir nods and throws himself single-mindedly into the makeshift console controls.

"That didn't get them all." You glance over to Aradia, then switch to a couple different bandwidths and sensor types to confirm.

"Yeah. Damn. Thousand to-" You look over at Karkat, who has gone from a shredded, barely-there shirt to no shirt. "-two odds aren't much better than five thousand and one to three."

"Get to the hauler in Bay One," you tell Vladir in The Command Voice. You think _Emotional Manipulation and Military Command_ , Dr. Lalonde, was probably your favorite training class at HCI. Even if the instructor being your X-chromosome donor meant you got the schlocky cliche "I have to be extra hard on you, son". The cerulean nods, but doesn't look up, so you assume he's not done yet.

You look down. Your arms would be a mess of raw agony if you hadn't flooded the appropriate nerve centers with the right neurochemicals, then added a couple glandular counter-agents to keep yourself coherent. End result, you have functioning arms (but you won't if you try to make them function too much), your mouth tastes like industrial solvent, and you suddenly feel intense empathy for armless John back on Gliese 581. Having to stay awake and working like this officially _sucks donkey chode_.

You tilt your head at the exit, and both you and Aradia break into a light jog. Flushing every last bit of coolant you have down the vambraces, you close your suit around your arms again, and tap Karkat on the head lightly.  
Lightly for power armor.

"Karks, I really don't want to play bulge-blocker, but I think we can maybe get you a date that doesn't involve you dying before you can fill any pails, if we leave _right now_. You gonna kill TZ?"

He blankfaces like he always does when the host of angry ranting Karkats in his head disagree. "No. We're off this rock, and _the Legislacerator_ can have fun with her _loyalties_ and explaining to her superiors how she lost Sehzar." He shoves Pyrope back against the wall. "See you around, Terezi. I have a revolution to run."

You smash your way through the furniture barricade until Aradia just lifts it out of the way, which you thank her for by politely glancing away and pretending you weren't being an idiot.

There are four Imperial Drones in the hallway already, over the bodies of two of Vladir's bodyguards. "Maximum density, 40% magnitude, 70% stability," you intone, and then twitch each fist twice. A hole in each head, and they have enough vital organs there that they collapse.

DS: whats the status of our network on the haulers  
KV: OVERPOWERED THE CREW IN BAY THREE, CREW SYMPATHIZERS IN ONE AND FIVE. FOUR IS HAVING INTERNAL PROBLEMS - COUPLE YELLOWBLOODS AND GREENBLOOD OVERSEERS RALLIED SOME OF THE DUPED, AND WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CELLS THERE.  
DS: well thats our big fuckin problem right there  
AM: ill g0  
KV: GREAT. ME AND ARADIA WILL HIT BAY FOUR-  
AM: n0  
AM: dave and i  
AM: trust me karkat  
AM: it will all work 0ut f0r the better this way  
KV: … FUCK IT, TOO MANY OTHER PROBLEMS.  
DS: you get bay one buddy, keep an eye on vladir make sure hes solid

The ex-Exarchutive catches up with you at the single above-ground passage from the rest of the complex to the docking bays.  
Also catching up with you here: Terezi Pyrope and a hundred and fifty - nah, call it two hundred - Imperial Drones.

"Goddamit, Karks, I thought you did more damage to her. Tell me you weren't holding back from old buried pity."

"No, Captain Asshat. Terezi's just fucking insane."

You shrug and nod because, yeah, she is. No chance of pulling off your appendage-searing trick again, you're completely out of emergency coolant and the systems would be more likely to just explode. Maybe getting limbs blown off works for John but you just don't think a robot arm is your style.

"Justice doesn't stop," Pyrope snarls, a low, throaty, very definitely injured growl. Karkat tosses you a glare, and you shrug in acknowledgement.

"Neither does liberty." Nice speech, Kar-

Wait. That was fucking Artyom.

The former planetary ruler walks forward slowly. "I earned my position. I knew how people worked, you see. How to tell what they wanted, what they needed, and what they would accept. What they _felt_. You lost me, Legislacerator, when I was forced to see rustbloods were also people."

"They are trolls, and their loyalty is to Her Imperial Condescension and her laws! Grab him," she snaps to the drones, and a half dozen zip forward to snatch an unresisting Vladir.

"She gives no loyalty to them," he says, even as they drag him back. "Loyalty must be earned! Not forced! It must be **SUFFERED FOR**."

Surprisingly, Karkat doesn't pick up on that cue before you. Maybe he did a lot of religious reading on Earth, maybe he spotted enough similarities with his ancestor's banned gospel to start mixing his curses.

But he's not from a planet where people have millennia  of experience _dying_ for their religions instead of killing for them.

Sometimes humans did both.

You tackle Karkat to the ground. He opens his mouth to shout when Artyom Vladir detonates the explosives on his chest. In slow-motion you can see the incoming blast wave, and then Aradia reaches a hand up and it meets an equal and opposing force - just too slow to keep a teal-streaked form from ducking under her psi-shield.

You shove off the ground and into a defensive stance. Terezi has a short sword, maybe gladius-length, grabbed from one of Vladir's bodyguards. You have precision-firing high-energy field projectors. As the ancients said: _if you want beef then bring the ruckus_.

Then Aradia collapses. Terezi is closer to her, and on the other side. If she jumps behind her before you shoot…  
And sensor ping. Maybe half the drones survived that blast. They'll be here as soon as they regroup.

She drops the sword.

You don't say anything, and you don't move.

Karkat does. He gets up, grumbling under his breath about "fucking unnecessary treating me like a soft-skinned grub", and walks up to Terezi.

They kiss. It's sharp, there's a bite or two, and claws on each others' backs, but it's brief.

"If I see you again, I'm not letting you escape, Karkles." You didn't think it was possible for her to shed that manic tone, to sound so quiet and calm. "You're mine."

"You won't see me, Terezi. You will see my army. And next time I capture you, you're going to learn what justice _really_ is." As an afterthought, he adds, "Dave too."

You look up from Aradia, armored and so certain of when death will come, but right now she seems far, far, _far_ from stable. "You mutant little perv. Count me in. It's been lovely hating you,  
TZ. Look me up any time. I'm in the directory. Dave Strider, Human Coalition Intelligence."

Terezi steps back and gives you the shark grin. "I'll have to visit your home next time Mr. Strider. I will be judging your hospitality very harshly!"

"What do you not?" you retort with an evil grin, and kick open the passage door.

 

You lock the gyros in you arms and keep Aradia as stable as you can while you run for Bay Four. It's not exactly easy, between the other haulers taking off, the complex creaking and groaning from the structural-modifications-via-explosives the lot of you have been making, and the ore hauler dropped down the central shaft - whose power core, combined with the fusion cluster bombs Karkat planted down there, are probably shaking up Sehzar's plate tectonics as you run.

You get to Bay Four - and utter fucking chaos. Jesus. At least with the drones the sides were fairly obvious, impossible odds trio vs faceless endless swarm.

Okay. You don't fucking care.

 **"This planet is breaking apart, and I have enough weaponry here to blow each and every one of you into a twitching mess if I have to. This hauler is leaving under Free Alternia's banner, or we can all burn here."** You don't even need Dr. Lalonde's class for this shit. You are ~~dead~~ fucking serious about getting off this ~~doomed~~ rock, before Aradia ~~d-~~ gets any worse.

It works. Almost. The stolen and makeshift weapons on one side of the battle are rapidly surrendered, the hauler re-boarded, and you've just started takeoff when the bay begins to crumble.

Somehow, you get out of the atmosphere with three of the six main engines firing, skin-of-the-teeth shit, and hit open space in time to see incoming FTL signatures. Now, unless someone told Earthfleet it's your birthday and Stellar Command felt little Davy Strider was doing such a good job he deserved an incursion fleet 38 ly behind enemy lines, that's probably the Imperial Navy.

Which, you know, maybe you could avoid, if some fucking Imperialist in the hold wasn't cracked into the systems, and some fucking psychic down there didn't crack the power core containment.

DS: just fucking jump karkat  
DS: theres escape pods for fifty people here we have at least eight hundred free alternians  
DS: nobody to fuckin save  
KV: … DAVE, CAN'T YOU EVER STOP BEING RIGHT ABOUT THE PAINFUL SHIT? AS A FAVOR TO A FRIEND WHOSE CIRCULATORY PUMPING ORGAN HAS ALMOST STOPPED ENOUGH TONIGHT?  
DS: sorry dude  
DS: take your fleet  
DS: hide or take a world  
DS: start the real rebellion  
DS: tell hci agent strider did his job above and beyond like the magnificent suave genius he was  
KV: DON'T LET THEM TAKE YOU ALIVE, DAVE.  
DS: thats it man  
DS: fucking dylan thomas  
DS: do not go gently  
DS: tic toc and keep ticking  
DS: come to my center you enter the winter  
DS: …  
DS: i know what theyll do to me karkat  
DS: to her  
KV: … FUCK. I DON'T. I SHOULD FUCKING HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY HERE, IF I CAN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING TO SAVE YOUR COCKY ASS.  
DS: it was a nice ass man but it had its time  
DS: fuckin go  
DS: i  
DS: i got this

You can see the flares of the powerful FTL drives on the ore haulers out the escape pod's window, which, given distances, means they've been gone for a few minutes now. You feel a sudden stirring and look down.

Aradia lifts herself slowly from your lap, pushes over, and slumps against the other wall of the pod. "We did it." That. She has no goddamn right to have such a beautiful smile right now. When you fucking know what's going to happen to you both - or what isn't, because you have your finger on the trigger of an overload sequence for your BELS, lying against the pod hatch.

"Yeah. We did."

"You put up monuments to the dead…" Her voice is wavering, unclear, like it's never been before. She puts her hand in yours, laces her fingers through yours. "And you do a… what was it, a corpse party?"

"Memorial. And you're not getting one any time soon."

She coughs, and it's too wet not to have blood in it. "Dave… I love that you think you can change how things have to be. But I know when my time ends.  
And it's now."

Time. _Time_. Not life, _**TIME** _.__

You close your eyes, you grip her hand tightly, and you throw yourself onto the razor's edge of fatal neurochemical levels.

You can feel it in the transition, as you slip towards coma, can see it in a way that doesn't involve optical nerves at all. _You said you love us. I need to be with you now and I need her with me and **I don't care what it costs me**_.

You fade, but you _know_ you're not dying, not hallucinating, because you know this too well to deny it any more.

### Of course, Dave. Welcome home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that now makes two stories of the Troll War done. Probably another couple chapters on Progression, 2-3 more big ones along these lengths, and another 4-5 single chapter side-stories.


End file.
